


How Pam Beesly Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life

by Annakovsky



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-07
Updated: 2007-05-07
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/pseuds/Annakovsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was one Friday night too many sitting at home by herself, watching <i>13 Going On 30</i> on TBS and eating Cheez-Its straight out of the box for dinner that did it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Pam Beesly Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the nothing_hip challenge on livejournal (song: Unwritten).

It was one Friday night too many sitting at home by herself, watching _13 Going On 30_ on TBS and eating Cheez-Its straight out of the box for dinner that did it. It's funny how being depressed about your life choices can drive you right into making even worse choices, but that's pretty much why she got back together with Roy, and that's pretty much why she's now at a party in a crappy apartment in Carbondale where there's a bottle opener built into the side of a kitchen cabinet, the avocado countertops look like they haven't been cleaned since 1971, and one of the bedrooms has a giant mural of a chicken skeleton painted over two walls in red and yellow.

Pam catches Ryan as he walks by, on his way to the keg. "Hey, is that a chicken skeleton painted in there?"

"What?" Ryan says. "Oh. Uh, yeah, apparently."

"... Why?" Pam says.

Ryan laughs and shakes his head. It's weird how much more cheerful he is away from the office. "I don't know," he says. "It was there when Dave and Gulliver moved in. You want another beer?"

"Uh, sure," Pam says, and hands Ryan her plastic cup. There are a lot of guys at this party, which she guesses is a plus? Kelly thinks so, anyway, and it seemed easier to go to the party than to be set up with another one of Ryan's business school friends. She was on board with the first few, but after awhile of not hitting it off with any of them it's just depressing.

Four guys and a girl are sitting around the kitchen table playing Quarters and Pam watches for awhile, feeling awkward, sipping at her terrible beer. She's listening to Kelly sing along to Justin Timberlake in the other room when a quarter bounces off the table and rolls up against Pam's foot. Pam picks it up and puts it back on the table.

"Hey, thanks," the guy closest to her says. He's got thick black curly hair and indie boy glasses that'd be pretentious except for how he's grinning at her in a really unaffected way. "You wanna get in on this?"

"Oh," Pam says. "I don't really know how to play."

"No, that's cool!" he says. Pam thinks his name is Zack? Zeke? "I'll show you. Here." He scoots his chair over to make room. They're doing some kind of complicated configuration of mugs, where you bounce quarters into them and pass them around and sometimes there's stacking? Pam's having a hard time following it. "So you're trying to bounce the quarter into the mug, right?" Zack says. "And you hold the quarter between your fingers like this." He puts his thumb and middle finger along the edge and his forefinger on the top of the quarter. "Or, that's how I hold it, anyway. Some people don't put their finger on top. So whichever. And then you bounce it off the table -- you have to, like, hit the table with your hand, see." He does it and the quarter bounces into the mug, first shot. "Now you try."

Pam's first quarter doesn't bounce at all, but her second one gets close, so that's something. You have to keep going until you get it in the mug, and then you pass it to your left, and the game moves really fast. Pretty soon Pam's concentrating like crazy, tongue between her teeth, and she finally gets it in the mug and passes it on. "Nice!" Zack says.

An hour later, they're still playing, and Pam's had -- well, she can't remember how much she's drunk, but she feels fine. Great, actually. Kind of incredibly fantastic, if you want to know the truth. They're playing Guitar Hero in the other room, and from the shouting it sounds like Ryan's winning.

She got held up so the two mugs are stacked in front of her. She has to make it on the first try, or else she has to drink.

"Take your time," Zack says. "You can totally do this."

"Thank you for your support," Pam says.

"You want a drumroll?" Zack says. He's grinning at her.

"No," Pam says with great dignity. "I have to concentrate." She concentrates and concentrates and squints her eyes at the mug and bounces the quarter, and totally misses.

"Ohhhhh," Zack says sympathetically.

She laughs and hits him on the shoulder. "Shut up," she says, as she starts to drink. He bumps her arm so she almost spills beer down her front. "I'll pour this on you," she says. "Don't even tempt me." This is seriously a great party -- she doesn't know why she doesn't come to parties like this all the time. It is like a tro-- a tra-- it's a trevasty, is what it is. Trevasty? Is that right? Whatever. She should've totally gone to parties like this all the time in college, instead of driving home every weekend to hang out with Roy. She wasted her youth, is what she did. She could've been going to parties with chicken skeletons on the walls.

You know what else? This Zack guy is really cute. She likes his hair. And she is single. She is super, super single and available for cute boys. Extra available for cute boys she doesn't work with. She leans into Zack as she drinks the rest of her beer. He feels warm and he smells like boy in that good way, that way that boys smell that makes you want to lean into them at parties.

Pam thinks she might be a little bit drunk, but that's okay. Once Quarters finally breaks up, she talks to some other people, and it's not even hard, it's just regular, easy, like talking to people she knows. She spends a long time talking to Gulliver, one of the guys whose apartment it is. He asks her her thoughts on the Elephant 6 Collective. She doesn't know what that is, but Gulliver has a lot of thoughts on it, and she nods a lot, and has some more of the boxed wine. Wine. In a box. To go with all the beer she's drunk with quarters in it. Class-ay.

She ends up on the couch, watching Ryan kick ass at Mario Soccer, and a few minutes later Zack wanders over to sit next to her. He's all casual as he puts his arm along the back of the couch, but it brushes her hair and their hips are touching, and her heart's beating away. This is the best party ever, and she's laughing at things Zack says, and it's kind of a relief to be so normal for a change, no stilted first dates with random old guys, no coworkers going from zero to sixty in the parking lot of a work event. Just a cute boy at a party, and some beer, like a regular person. She and Zack end up talking about what the best John Hughes movie is, and she hears herself arguing that the kids in the Breakfast Club are never going to talk to each other again after the end of the movie, and that's what makes it so good, that all their relationships are doomed.

"It's about how when you're trapped with people maybe you think you're in love," Pam says. "But that's not your real life, you know?"

"I don't know," Zack says. "I think that Bender and Claire might make it."

"Maybe if they were older," Pam says. "Like, in college. But they're totally not going to. I mean, the kiss was great and everything, but that is a doomed relationship."

"Cynic," Zack says.

"Romantic," Pam says.

"It only seems that way to you because you have a cold, dead heart," Zack says cheerfully.

"I'll have you know I am very warm-hearted," Pam says. "Your heart is just overheated. It's interfering with your brain." Zack starts laughing.

Across the room, Kelly is beaming at them. Which is good, that Pam built up all that good will, because by 3 in the morning, Pam is weaving towards Gulliver and Dave's bathroom to throw up, and afterwards Ryan and Kelly have to drive her home. Not even to her own house -- she's so drunk they take her home with them to Ryan's, where Pam passes out on the couch, a trashcan beside her in case she needs to throw up again.

"Don't even worry about it," Kelly says in the morning, when Pam's sitting on the couch holding her aching head in her hands. "Ryan's friends have to crash here all the time. It's totally no big deal."

"Thanks," Pam says. She hasn't felt this disgustingly awful in a really long time. Plus, embarrassed. She is a grown woman and she's pretty sure she threw up in front of Ryan. Faaaaabulous.

"You want eggs?" Kelly says. "You should totally eat something. You'll feel better, I promise."

"Oh," Pam says, and feels like she's going to barf just thinking about it. "Um, no, thanks."

"You know what?" Kelly says. "I'm going to run to the store and get eggs anyway. Ryan doesn't have any. I make the best scrambled eggs, Pam, you have no idea."

Kelly's picking up her purse, and Pam thinks about trying to stop her, because she's really not going to eat any eggs, but the whole conversation seems like a lot of effort. She leans her head back against the couch and closes her eyes.

"Ryan!" Kelly calls. "I'm going to the store, you want anything?"

"Nah," Ryan calls from somewhere in the direction of the kitchen. Pam hears Kelly's keys jingling, and then the door opening and closing, and she thinks that being dead must be a whole lot more comfortable than how she feels right now.

She hears footsteps and someone setting something down on the coffee table, and when she opens her eyes it's Ryan, in sweatpants and a faded t-shirt, setting down a glass of water and some aspirin.

"How're you feeling?" Ryan says, with that look on his face where he's not smiling but he looks secretly amused.

She means to say "Terrible," but it comes out something more like, "Blurrrgh."

"Yeah, I thought so," Ryan says.

She reaches out for the aspirin and water and swallows it down. The water's amazing -- it feels like it goes straight into her brain, relaxing whatever's all cramped and aching up there. "Thanks," she manages, once she's drunk half the glass at one go. "I, uh, didn't throw up on you, did I?"

"Nope," Ryan says.

"I didn't throw up on any of your friends, did I?" Pam's never drunk so much that she's thrown up before. It's such a fun new experience.

"Nah," Ryan says. "You were a perfect lady."

"Shut up," Pam says, but she's almost laughing.

Ryan grabs the remote and starts flipping channels, finally settling down on a Project Runway marathon on Bravo.

"Kelly's not here," Pam says.

"I know," Ryan says, and shrugs. "Tim Gunn is an icon for our time. Best reality TV character, no question."

They watch the designers having drama over sewing machine etiquette for awhile in silence, Pam drinking as much water as she can stand.

When Kelly gets back from the store and comes into the living room, she claps her hands at what they're watching. "Yay! Is this a marathon?"

"Yeah," Ryan says.

"Awesome," Kelly says. "I am going to scramble us some eggs and then we can watch all afternoon. Although, Pam, can you even believe it? Ryan doesn't like Tim Gunn."

Pam looks at Ryan and he shrugs at her, doing that not-smiling-but-amused thing again. "Oh," Pam says. "He doesn't?"

"I know!" Kelly says. "It's ridiculous, right? Who doesn't like Tim Gunn?"

"Oh, I don't know," Pam says, looking at Ryan. He appears to be asking her with his eyes not to rat him out. "Tim Gunn is kind of... smug."

"What?!?" Kelly says.

"Yeah," Ryan says, overly sincerely. "I can't stand him."

"I know," Pam says. "What's with that whole 'Make it work' thing? Ugh."

"I cannot even BELIEVE you guys," Kelly says, and she talks about the genius of Tim Gunn for the rest of the commercial break, until Ryan finally reminds her that she should put the eggs and milk in the fridge.

As soon as Kelly's out of earshot, Pam says, "Yeah, I love Tim Gunn."

"Who doesn't?" Ryan says, and they go back to watching Tim Gunn be fabulous all over their TV screen.

They eat scrambled eggs balanced on their knees in front of the marathon -- well, Ryan and Kelly do. Pam finally manages some toast, and feels better. She never really thought she'd be spending an entire Saturday hungover on Ryan the temp's couch, but it's not that bad, really. It's actually kind of fun, except for the hangover part.

**

Sunday afternoon she's feeling a lot better, slouching around the house in jeans and a hoodie, cleaning in a vague kind of way and thinking about how she doesn't want to go to work tomorrow, when her phone beeps. It's a text from Kelly. "pam! we r having pizza 2night w ppl at ryan's u wanna come over?"

It's Sunday night, but well, why not? She had fun at the party, and maybe some of the people tonight will be fun too. She's expanding her social network. Or, that's what Kelly keeps telling her she needs to do, post-breakup. Apparently it's a service that Kelly provides.

But when she gets over to Ryan's, it turns out that "ppl" is actually just Zack, sitting on the floor in front of the TV playing Mario Kart with Ryan on an old Nintendo 64.

"Hey!" he says, and beams at Pam.

"Oh," Pam says. "Hey Zack." She's trying to think if Zack is one of the people who saw her throwing up on Friday night but she can't really remember. What an awesome weekend. "Excuse us just a second," she says to the boys, and grabs Kelly's arm to pull her into the kitchen. "Kelly," Pam whispers, letting go of Kelly's arm once they're out of earshot. "What are you doing?"

"What?" Kelly says. "He's cute, right? You guys totally hit it off the other night, right?"

"I don't know," Pam says. "I guess."

"I knew it!" Kelly says. "This is perfect. You should totally hook up with him and then we can all double date, and it'll be amaaaaaaazing, Pam!"

"Kelly!" Pam says, jumping in before Kelly has them having a double wedding and babies born on the same day. "I told you no more set-ups."

"Who said this was a set-up?" Kelly says. "It's just friends hanging out. And if it ends up with you guys having totally adorable babies, that's just a perk." The doorbell rings. "Oh, the pizza!" Kelly says, hurrying off to get the door, and Pam rolls her eyes and goes back into the living room.

"Pam!" Zack says. "You have to play this." And pretty soon she's sitting on the floor next to Zack, racing a go-kart around a video game track as Bowser, eating pepperoni pizza straight out of the box. She might as well just join a frat right now.

"Nah, you're much prettier than most frat boys," Zack says.

"Most?" Pam says. Ryan laughs.

"You heard me," Zack says. He has dimples when he smirks like that -- Pam was noticing them the other night. "Some of those frat boys look pretty good in girl's clothes."

"Gaywad," Ryan says.

"Get with the program, Ryan, it's 2007," Zack says, expertly hitting Ryan's go-kart with a red shell and taking the lead. "There is no gay or straight."

Mario Kart is just embarrassing -- even Kelly keeps beating Pam. Actually, Kelly keeps beating all of them, like she has some weird savant power for old Nintendo games. Or, more realistically, like Ryan makes her play this a lot.

Eventually they flip the TV over to a Terminator movie, and in the second commercial break, Kelly gestures to the food and says, "Hey Ryan, you wanna help me put this stuff away?"

"The... pizza? You really need help with that?" Ryan says.

"Ryan," Kelly hisses.

"Oh," Ryan says, glancing at Pam and Zack, sitting next to each other on the couch. "Right. Yes, I will help." He makes an apologetic face at Pam, but picks up some of the soda cans and follows Kelly dutifully towards the kitchen.

As they disappear down the hallway, Zack nudges her with his shoulder and they both dissolve into giggles.

"I think we're supposed to make out now," Zack says.

"I think you're right," Pam says, and bumps his shoulder back.

He bumps her again and she bops him lightly on the arm. They're both still laughing, but he grabs her wrist between two fingers and uses it to pull her in and kiss her lightly, just for a second. Even though it's kind of an obvious place for the night to go, she somehow wasn't quite expecting that, so she doesn't even close her eyes. It's been a long time since she's hooked up with someone who she hadn't known for a million years first. Like, since never.

"Wouldn't want to disappoint Kelly," Zack says softly, and then takes off his glasses and smiles and kisses her again. His hair's soft when she puts her hand in it, and he's a good kisser. Pam's stomach's flipping over like she's fifteen, it's kind of ridiculous.

**

Monday morning, Jim comes in looking sleepy. Karen's already been there for 10 minutes -- not that Pam keeps track of how often they come in together or anything.

"Morning," she says.

"Hey," Jim says, hanging his coat up.

"Have a good weekend?" she asks.

"I guess," Jim says. "It was quiet. How about you?"

"Yeah, it was fine," Pam says. And Jim goes to sit down, like that's the end of the conversation. Which isn't really different than any other day, but it still feels like seventh grade, when Pam's best friend Jessica Greenberg decided she'd rather sit with the cool girls at lunch than with Pam. The thing about Jim these days is that he just makes her feel bad, all the time.

"Hey," Ryan says as he comes in the door, and smiles at her a little bit, a secret, we-spent-the-whole-weekend-together-and-you-hooked-up-with-my-friend smile.

Pam smiles back. "Hey, Peach." Because Ryan plays every round as the Princess in Mario Kart, insisting that she's his good luck charm -- he won't even let Kelly have a turn.

"You got something to say?" Ryan says, and Pam laughs. As she goes back to her computer, she notices Jim looking at them. Well, whatever. She catches him looking again when Kelly comes up to talk to her about what they're going to do that weekend (when Pam points out that it's only Monday, Kelly tells her it's never too early to get a plan in place), and when Kelly comes up to talk about maybe going shopping after work, and when Pam's phone beeps her text-message beep unexpectedly in the middle of the morning.

"Texting at work now, Beesly?" Jim says, getting a jelly bean, as Pam fumbles for her phone and flips it open.

The text is from Zack, and says, _I don't care what you say, Bender and Claire would totally talk to each other the day after_. "Uh... apparently," Pam says, trying not to smile. "What, you don't?"

"Some of us," Jim says, mock-seriously, "are trying to be professional here." But then Angela comes up with a question about some of Jim's expense reports, and he gets distracted.

Pam reads Zack's text again and feels warm inside. Finally she texts back, _I'm willing to be convinced._ She is, too.

**

So after that, she and Zack are dating, pretty much. She likes him -- he's fun, and he likes her, and he's always calling with things to do. Suddenly her social life is way more full, parties on the weekends, hanging out with Zack's roommates on weekday nights. Zack's a couple of years younger than her, which is a little weird, but it's nice to feel young, to do the kinds of things she never actually did when she was 24. Plus, somewhere in dating Roy, she'd lost all her female friends, but with Zack she's getting that back. She and Kelly go shopping together, and she and Zack's roommate Paul's girlfriend Molly are romcom buddies, and she really hits it off with this girl Lucy that she keeps seeing at parties.

After they've been dating three weeks, Zack finds her sketch book and is really psyched about it.

"You can draw?" he says, excited. "I didn't know you could draw!" He looks through her whole portfolio while she sits on the couch, legs folded under herself nervously, watching his reactions. At the end of the portfolio, he looks up. "Pam," he says. "You're really good."

"Oh," she says. "Thanks."

"No, seriously," he says, and looks back down at the last drawing. It's of her dad's hands. "You're really good," he says, quieter.

A week later, he says he thinks they should start a webcomic, Pam drawing, him writing it. He starts emailing her links to all these ones he already likes, and brainstorming characters. Which -- it's fun, actually, thinking up characters. She starts sending him sketches of different ideas, cats and robots and astronauts and ghosts. They end up deciding on doing a comic with birds -- Zack likes the way she does their wings.

So they start putting it together, Pete the wacky bird who's always in over his head, and Socrates the philosopher bird who always asks questions. Pam likes doing the drawings, and she's getting good with the computer drawing program she's been using, but the thing is, she doesn't really get half the jokes. Or she gets them, but they're not funny. Or they talk a lot about Nietzsche, or whatever Pitchfork talked about this week. Which is fine, but, well, yeah. She thinks it's a little much, though she doesn't tell Zack that.

One day, she's working on the latest strip, so intent on it Jim's been looking over her shoulder for a full minute before she notices. She jumps, and minimizes the window.

"What're you working on?" Jim says. "That was pretty good."

"Oh, nothing," Pam says. "This comic. I don't know."

"Oh," Jim says. He looks a little hurt that she didn't tell him more, but she doesn't want to, so. She wonders when she stopped wanting to tell Jim things. Probably since he stopped asking -- it's weird that he's asking now, actually.

**

One Friday night, like usual she and Zack and a bunch of people are out at a bar after work, having a good time. It's getting late, and she's tipsy, and sitting between boys that are talking about baseball. Booooooring. On the other side of Zack, Lucy and Jen are talking about NPR, and Pam wants in on that conversation. "Switch places with me," she says to Zack, and starts to clamber over him.

"What?" he says. "Hey!" Her knee is digging into his leg, so he starts tickling her so she collapses on his lap, giggling and trying to push his hands off. She's still sitting on his lap, trapped with his hands on her hips, when Ryan gets back to the table with more drinks.

She looks up, laughing, to see that Jim and Karen are standing behind Ryan. Jim's staring at her. "Hey, look who I found," Ryan says to Kelly. Feeling awkward, Pam slides off Zack's lap to sit on the other side of him, next to Lucy. But Zack keeps his arm around her, still talking about baseball with Gulliver. "Everybody," Ryan says. "This is Jim and Karen. Guys, this is everybody."

"Hey," Pam says. Karen smiles at her. Jim looks weird.

Everybody shifts around to make room, and Pam ends up next to Karen, with Jim across from them, next to Ryan. "So, uh, hey!" Pam says. "How are you?"

"Good," Karen says. "Better now that I got Halpert out of the house."

Pam laughs. She can tell Jim's watching them out of the corner of his eye, even though he's talking to Ryan. "Oh," she says to Karen. "Have you met Zack?"

She introduces them, and Karen asks how long they've been dating, and they have a perfectly nice conversation. Jim says he's tired, though, and after one drink he wants to leave.

"What was up with that guy?" Zack says after Jim and Karen leave. "He kept, like, glowering at me."

Pam shrugs and changes the subject. She wishes she didn't still feel weird around Jim -- he's got a girlfriend, he's made it perfectly clear that he's not interested, but it never seems to sink in with her. It's pretty pathetic how she still wishes they were together.

She talks to her mom about it on the phone the next day. "I don't know, Mom," she says. "I just -- I feel like I missed my shot with him and I'll always regret it."

"Oh hon," her mom says. "I know. But maybe the timing's just wrong. Or maybe it's just not meant to be."

"Yeah," Pam says. "Maybe."

"Focus on Zack," her mom says.

"Yeah," Pam says. "I like Zack."

It's getting a little bit exhausting, though, being with Zack. There's always something they're doing, people to see, beer pong to play, and she's spending an awful lot of time either drunk or hungover. The novelty value is starting to wear off.

Although the good thing about being so busy is that she hardly has time to think about Jim at all. And when she does, she works hard on letting it go. She lies in bed with Zack, her head on his skinny chest, and thinks about reality. This is what her life really is, Zack's pale skin warm under her cheek, and his sleepy breathing, art class and web comics and driving to Philly to see bands she's never heard of play in dingy rooms above bars. She's a little out of her depth sometimes, but she's happy, mostly. When no one's asking her for her opinion of the Arcade Fire's new album, anyway.

It's strange, but it doesn't actually take long for her little zen meditations to start working. And not thinking much about Jim anymore, not beating herself up about not calling him over the summer, actually makes it a lot easier to talk to the real Jim at work. They have fun, talking about last night's _How I Met Your Mother_ or trading lunch items in the break room. Being around him stops making her feel bad -- it's back to being normal, he's her work friend, it's okay. And Jim must be getting over things too, because he's stopped with the little barbed comments, and sometimes he even looks like he likes her again.

Plus, Karen's a lot more relaxed around Pam now that she's met Zack. Which is nice, because Pam's always liked Karen. They start watching _America's Next Top Model_ together on Wednesday nights, and sometimes going to lunch and complaining about work. Karen's funny, and smart, and maybe they never really talk about Jim, but that's probably for the best.

**

The whole point of dating Zack is that it's fun, and low-commitment -- she's never seen herself being with him for the long-term, but he's an entertaining kid, and it's nice to have someone to do things with. So things are fine as long as they're just having fun, but after a couple of months, Zack starts getting weird. He starts sleeping over every night, and asking her how many kids she wants to have, and dropping hints about moving in together. He even wants to hold hands all the time, which is cute and all, but getting increasingly tedious. This is not what she signed on for.

"You have to tell him," Lucy says one day, when they've met for lunch. "When boys start getting like that, it has to be nipped in the bud. They're a bunch of emo little girls, and you can't encourage it." Pam laughs. Lucy's pretty awesome -- a lot of times Pam wishes she were more like her.

That night, she tells Zack they have to talk, but when she says, as gently as she can, that she really doesn't see them as a long-term thing, he gets really upset. They end up having a screaming fight, in which Zack yells, "Well, maybe we should just break up then!"

"Fine with me!" Pam yells back, and stomps out.

By the time she gets home, she has three messages in her voicemail from him. He's crying in two of them.

Boys. Seriously.

**

She hadn't exactly been planning on breaking up with him, but now that she has, it's a huge relief. Which she hadn't expected at all, but there it is. She has her whole apartment to herself, every night, blissfully empty. No one eats all her cereal or brownies or fruit or Cheez-Its. There aren't any gross chin hairs in her sink from when Zack shaves. And she's still busy, going out with all her new friends, but it doesn't have to be every night anymore. Some Fridays she really does like to take it easy, and now if she wants to stay home, she can, and it's like she hadn't even realized how tired she was until she could finally relax. Dating is so stressful.

**

One day, after Pam and Zack have been broken up for three weeks, Karen comes up to Pam's desk around lunch time. "Hey," Karen says. "You wanna go get pedicures over lunch? I need to get out of here."

"Oh," Pam says. "Sure, that sounds good." They sneak out before the cameras notice, giggling as they duck around the corner.

They go to the mall and get smoothies before walking over to the nail place. Karen sighs when she gets her feet soaking in the hot water. "Thank God," she says.

"Are you pretty stressed?" Pam says.

"Yeah," Karen says. "My accounts have been really insane lately. And Jim's being kind of a dick."

"Oh," Pam says. "Uh, really?" She takes a sip of smoothie.

"Yeah, well," Karen says. "I finally dumped him for being such a sad sack, and he's just being really immature about it."

Pam has to concentrate really hard to not choke on her smoothie. "Oh," she says after a second. "I'm sorry. That sucks."

"It's just such a relief to get out of the office and away from the dirty looks," Karen says.

"Yeah, I bet," Pam says.

"But God, I'm so happy. I can finally leave the house on weekends without having to spend an hour convincing Jim first. Even if it's kind of awkward now to keep working with him, it's totally worth it. I don't even know why I stuck it out for so long."

"Oh," Pam says. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Since Zack and I broke up, it's been a huge relief. I had no idea how tired I was of it until I finally cut the cord."

"I know, right?" Karen says. "I mean, why are guys so annoying? I don't know why we put up with it."

"Totally," Pam says. "I mean, Zack practically wanted to get married or something. What's that about? He plays beer pong on weekends!"

"Ugh, really?" Karen says. "Jim was, like, the opposite. I swear, sometimes I thought that if I accidentally left a t-shirt over there, he was going to run away screaming that I should stop smothering him. God, Halpert, get over yourself!"

Pam laughs.

"To singleness," Karen says, and lifts up her plastic smoothie cup for a toast.

"You know it," Pam says.

She gets her toenails painted coral; Karen chooses silver. Pam's having a really great time just hanging out, but even so, in the back of her mind she can't stop thinking about Jim and Karen breaking up. She just -- she did not expect that.

**

At work, the weeks go by. She's single, and Jim's single, but he doesn't do anything about it, and she thinks maybe deep down she's relieved. Maybe. It's hard to tell.

But they start drifting together naturally again, at office parties and during regular days. Jim leans over her desk so much it's almost like it was back before he transferred. Some days she forgets that things were ever weird between them, which is not exactly something she ever thought would happen. But it's comfortable. Easy. And she's trying not to overanalyze it.

On Pam's birthday, Michael makes them all go to a bowling alley to celebrate. They bowl in teams, and Jim puts himself on Pam's like it's a given, no question. The two of them play with Kevin and Toby -- Kevin has a strange, near professional ability at bowling that's almost alarming. Pam herself is terrible.

"You need a lucky ball, is the thing," Jim says. "You want me to find you one?" And when she says sure, he embarks on a five minute search through all the lanes around, until he finally comes back with a ball that's swirled with purple.

"Wow," Pam says, looking at it. They've had to stop their game to wait for Jim to get back, and Kevin's still over at the snack bar. "That's really... something, Jim."

"I know, right?" he says. "Look at how the luck is swirled over the ball."

"Oh, luck?" she says. "Is that what that is?"

"Are you doubting the lucky ball?" Jim says.

"Oh, no," Pam says. "Of course not."

"Good," Jim says. "Don't be a doubter."

She actually does bowl a little better with the new ball. It's the swirls of luck, Jim assures her. Many times.

**

One Thursday, she's taken it upon herself to redo their filing system. She's still right in the middle of it when five o'clock comes and goes, and since she doesn't have anything to rush home to, she decides to finish up the section she's doing before leaving for the day. She'll take an extra long lunch tomorrow to make up for it. She's not the only one working a little late -- Jim and Michael are in Michael's office having a meeting.

She gets involved in what she's doing, and by the time she comes up for air at 5:30, Jim and Michael are still going, the three of them the only ones left in the office. She has no idea what they could possibly be doing in there, but she has some labels to finish making, so shrugs and goes on with it. She's just about finishing up when she hears Michael give a giant sob, so loudly she can hear it even through the closed door. Uh oh.

Jim turns around and catches her eye through the window, making a "Help!" face. So she gets up and pushes Michael's door open, leans in. "Hey, is everything okay?" she asks.

Michael just sobs louder.

"He and Jan broke up," Jim says in an undertone.

"Again?" Pam says. Michael's got his hands lying on the desk in front of him, palms up, pathetically. He and Jan had gotten back together a month before, but apparently it didn't stick.

Pam grabs a box of tissues and brings them over to Michael, rubbing his back. "I'm sorry," she says.

"Oh, Pam," Michael says. He's catching his breath again, but his face is wet with tears and snot -- it's not a pretty sight.

When Michael looks away from him, Jim rolls his eyes at Pam, and she grins. Even so, Jim says, "Hey, man, is there anything I can do?" in a reasonably sympathetic voice.

Michael takes a shuddering breath in. "Um," he says. "Well. You know the expense reports?"

Pam's getting a bad feeling about this. "The ones you were supposed to mail three days ago?"

"Pam!" Michael says, shaking his head. "That's not... helpful. I was going to drive them up to corporate myself tonight. To see Jan. But, um."

Jim looks at Pam and Pam looks at Jim.

"I can't go alone," Michael says, and starts crying again.

Jim looks pained.

Pam sighs internally. "It's okay, Michael," she says. "I can take them."

"I'm coming too," Michael says. "I have to talk to her."

"Yeah, uh, I don't know that that's a good idea," Jim says.

"I'm coming!" Michael says, and he looks like he might burst into tears again.

"Okay," Pam says. "That's okay. I can drive you."

"I can come too," Jim says. "If you need, uh, moral support." He's looking at Pam when he says it, but Michael takes it as directed at him.

"Jimster," he says. "That's really -- that really means a lot." Michael takes a deep shuddering breath and mops at his nose with a tissue.

Pam smiles at Jim and shrugs, and apparently they're all spending their evening driving to New York. Well, she doesn't care about Thursday night TV anyway.

Pam drives, with Jim in the passenger seat and Michael in the back. The sun's getting low in the sky, so the light's warm and reddish, coming through the back window and falling across the side of Jim's face. Jim takes control of the radio and fiddles, flipping all the way around the dial twice before finally settling on a song by Snow Patrol.

"Really, Jim?" Pam says, teasing. It's not so much that she knows anything about music these days, it's just after months of dating a hipster, she knows what to be ashamed of liking.

He makes a face at her. "Shut it, Beesly."

The whole way to New York, there's sniffling from the back seat. Jim has a box of Kleenex between his feet and keeps passing them back.

"I'm gonna die alone," Michael says in a low voice as they cross into New Jersey.

"Michael," Pam says. "You're not. Lots of people love you."

There's a long pause. "They do?" Michael says. His voice is gravelly and stuffed up from crying.

"Yeah," Pam says. She looks over at Jim.

"You're a good person, Michael," Jim says.

Michael sniffs again. "Yeah," he says, after a long moment. He's quiet the rest of the way to New York. He really is a ridiculous person, but you want to protect him, sometimes.

**

At corporate, Jim and Pam wait in the reception area while Michael goes into Jan's office to talk to her. There are some magazines scattered around, but they all look pretty boring.

Michael and Jan are still vaguely within earshot, so Jim makes a face at Pam like, well, *that's* going to go well and she shrugs back and rolls her eyes. Michael and Jan, always a train wreck.

They talk about Spiderman 3 for a little bit, and what is up with Dwight's haircut, and then at a lull in the conversation, Jim says, "So, uh, how's Zack?" He's examining the cuticle on his left thumb, like he's not paying much attention.

"Oh," Pam says, taken aback. "You don't... uh, actually, Zack and I broke up." It's weird that Jim didn't hear that, in an office where Kelly Kapoor works. That's just -- well. That changes what she thought happened, these weeks they've both been single. Maybe he hasn't been not asking her out on purpose. Maybe he's just been not asking her out by accident.

"Oh," Jim says. "I'm sorry."

She wants to say, "You are?" like the Captain in the Sound of Music, but that's not so much how real life goes. Instead she says, "Well, I'm not."

Jim laughs, and looks at her, his head tilted to the side. There's something in his face, like the way he used to look at her last year. She has to look away, smile faintly to herself. It's been practically a full year since Jim told her he was in love with her -- surely that's too long for.... But when she looks back at him, his expression hasn't changed.

**

Michael comes back out of Jan's office after not too long. Jan's behind him, her face painfully composed and professional. "Thank you for the expense reports," she says politely to Jim and Pam.

"Oh, sure thing," Jim says. Michael's already walking to the elevator.

Michael won't say anything about what happened, the whole way home. The sun set while he was talking to Jan, so they drive back in the dark, headlights moving along the highway. About a half hour into the trip, Jim looks in the backseat and says, "He fell asleep."

Pam glances in the rearview mirror to see Michael's head resting against the window, his eyes closed. "Well," she says. "He had a rough day." She and Jim smile at each other, and for a second it's like they're parents, their kid asleep in the backseat. It's a funny image.

They talk in low voices after that, being careful not to wake him. "Hey," Pam says when they're in the middle of nowhere, dark fields on either side. "I have a question for you."

There's a pause. "Uh... yeah?" Jim says, sounding weirdly wary. Whoops -- she didn't mean to give him the impression that she was about to say something earthshaking.

"Do you think the kids in the Breakfast Club will talk to each other after the movie ends?"

Jim laughs a little. "That's your question?"

"Why, you've never thought about it?"

"Well, not really," Jim says. He thinks for a second. "I don't know," he says. "I guess they'll probably go back to their regular friends. But I think they'll say hi to each other in the halls afterwards."

"Yeah," Pam says. "That's pretty much what I think too."

"Although," Jim says. "Bender and Claire -- I don't know. They might make it."

"Really?" Pam says. "But they're, like, from completely different social castes. Their friends would totally pressure them out of it."

"Well, maybe," Jim says. "I mean, they might break up for awhile. But I think maybe they'll grow up some and end up getting back together after all."

"Yeah?" Pam says.

"Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get something to stick," Jim says. The SUV in front of them switches lanes, turn signal blinking in time to the music. The radio is playing Wonderwall, Oasis singing sad and slow. "I hope, anyway," Jim says.

"Yeah," Pam says, into the dark and quiet car. "Me too." Jim's got his elbow up, resting on the windowsill so that he can prop his head on his hand.

"Hey," Pam says, before she can talk herself out of it, before she can get too scared. "Do you want to go to a movie with me this weekend?"

Jim doesn't move or say anything for what seems like ten years, even though it's probably just a second or two. Pam's heart is about to beat out of her chest, and she has a death grip on the steering wheel.

"You mean, like a date?" Jim says finally. She doesn't dare glance over at him to see the expression on his face.

"Yeah," she says. Her voice sounds a little choked.

Jim shifts in his seat. "Yeah," he says. "You know, I would like to go to the movies."

"Good," Pam says. When she glances over, Jim's smiling, looking out the window. "That's good."

"Yeah," Jim says.

The highway markers count the miles down to Scranton, and in the backseat Michael is snoring. Maybe sometimes it does take a couple of tries to get things right. Maybe this time they're the kind of people who can.

Michael's snores eventually get so loud that he wakes himself up, jerking upright with a start. He wipes his chin, where he's been drooling a little bit.

"You okay back there?" Jim says. He's almost laughing, his head leaning back against the seat. It's getting late.

"Where are we?" Michael asks, sounding groggy and out of it.

"Getting close," Pam says, her foot on the accelerator. She's in the fast lane now, speeding down the empty highway. "Don't worry, Michael. We're almost there."


End file.
